The Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) has released a new report highlighting the need for the UK to significantly shake up the UK's carbon reduction policies in the built environment.
The report identifies several critical gaps in the UK's carbon policy that must be filled to meet net-zero goals by 2050.
Currently, the UK has no decarbonisation targets at the level of industry sub-sectors and single buildings. The current metrics mandating building performance also do not easily translate into total carbon output.
These gaps mean that it is challenging to track buildings' carbon output and if retrofits are achieving their stated reductions.
There is also sparse data on the embodied carbon output of buildings. Embodied carbon is the emissions associated with materials and construction processes throughout the whole lifecycle of a building or infrastructure.
To close these gaps, the report calls for science-based decarbonisation targets for UK real estate at sub-sectoral and asset levels. Combined with this, the paper asks the UK Government to establish a national programme to fund retrofit projects, along with the following changes:
- Improve the EPC scheme to make it fit for the different purposes that it serves - changing the way the scheme is calculated, presented, and used.
- Accelerate the development of a national performance-based rating scheme based on the NABERS UK system
- Introduce embodied carbon requirements in a new section of the Building Regulations
Crucially the report calls for the means to track the lifetime carbon output of each building. This means adopting the RICS Professional Statement on Whole-Life Carbon Assessment as national methodology; mandating embodied carbon assessments to be conducted at design and completion stages; and introducing maximum limits to embodied carbon.
Fabrizio Varriale, Place and Space Analyst at RICS, said: "Crucial changes need to be made in the way that carbon output is tracked in the UK's built environment. By implementing the policy recommendations set out in this report, the UK Government will maximise the impact that sustainability policies in the built environment sector will bring to achieving its net zero goals by 2050.
"This is an opportunity to radically shake up the sector and place it at the forefront of the UK's carbon reduction initiatives by advancing a scientifically-focussed and data-driven sector that swiftly reacts and implements the changes needed to meet carbon output goals."
